Killzone 2 vs 2008's best shooters

We pit the PS3's upcoming epic against three of last year's biggest guns

Why Resistance 2 is better: It’s true that both games look good. The difference is in what you’re looking at. Killzone 2 creates a dreary sci-fi world of corridors and corrugated iron, and it’s nothing we haven’t seen before – even if the soldiers do fall over realistically.

Resistance 2 is about spectacle. The first time you emerge from underground, you’re met with a panoramic view of the familiar city of San Francisco in ruins, with sky-filling alien craft slowly moving inland. It’s a seriously visually striking sight. Maybe R2 can’t clearly outclass Killzone in terms of graphics, but R2 isn’t about details. It’s about jaw-dropping moments and larger-than-life exploding monsters. So the death animations don’t adhere to Ph.D-level physics. Real fans of fun know that it’s better to have aliens melt into piles of goo anyway.- Paul Ryan, Associate Editor, CheatPlanet

Why Killzone 2 will be better: It’s interesting to note that R2 and KZ2 share the same premise, only reversed; where Resistance 2 is a sci-fi story set near the World War II era, KZ2 is a World War II story set in the far future. Strangely, it’s Killzone 2 that comes away with the more believable setting; while R2 is set in familiar American trappings (marred by alien structures and huge fleshy blobs and shit), KZ2’s planet Helghan feels more like a world that could actually exist.

Then you’ve got the characters, who in KZ2 establish themselves firmly and memorably from the beginning and remain a vital part of the story until the end. What does Resistance have? A stony-faced soldier protagonist, a few interchangeable squadmates and a floating psychic gasbag? Fascinating. - Mikel

Why Resistance 2 is better: If all you want is the game that creates the most believable world, you’d be better off with a Tom Clancy game. But for those of us who are interested in a game that creates an awesome setting, perhaps one filled with juggernaut-sized aliens swarming through a placid 1930s neighborhood, Resistance 2 is the best choice. - Paul

Why Killzone 2 will be better: There really isn’t much difference between the basic gameplay in Resistance 2 and Killzone 2, except that Killzone 2 is more about cover and scavenging weapons and ammo, and Resistance 2 is preoccupied with wasting alien hordes with ornate, multi-function weaponry. If Killzone is Sony’s answer to Gears, then Resistance is its answer to Halo, and the one you like better largely depends on how methodical a gamer you are.

That said, R2 doesn’t even have a cover button. Weak. – Mikel

Why Resistance 2 is better: It’s tough to put it any better than, “Resistance 2 is preoccupied with wasting alien hordes with ornate, multi-function weaponry.” If this is a bad thing, I’ll turn in my gamercard, right now. It almost doesn’t even seem fair to mention that R2 has four types of grenades alone.

Why Killzone 2 will be better: R2’s Chimera are, for lack of a better word, brainless. Sure, they’ve got cool gimmicks like invisibility and occasional hugeness, but they’ll ignore cover or group tactics in favor of just charging at you blindly and unloading in your face. Hell, the Chameleons will actually break camouflage – their main advantage - just to charge headlong into the business end of your shotgun. And then there are the bosses, which seem to rely on the same pre-scripted attack patterns we’ve come to expect from videogame baddies over the years.

Enemies in Killzone 2 are a little more wily and unpredictable, and while the Helghast don’t have any giant monsters or invisible ninja freaks to throw in your face, their tanks, attack drones, lumbering heavy troopers and sheer numbers are almost as good at inspiring fear (or at least frustration). Also? If something with glowing red eyes is going to try to shoot me full of holes with a high-tech firearm, I’d feel better about losing to it if it wore a shirt. – Mikel

Why Resistance 2 is better: The Chimera aren’t stupid, they’re just using strategies so advanced that sometimes it’s hard to tell that they aren’t mindlessly charging at the first sign of a solitary human soldier. That, and there are so many of them, their legions transformed pod people, and their towering robotic monstrosities, that it doesn’t really matter if a couple of them forget to duck every now and then. - Paul

Why Killzone 2 will be better: Resistance 2 doesn’t even have any vehicles, so let’s just declare Killzone 2 more awesome in this category and move on. – Mikel

Why Resistance 2 is better: Way to take a cheap shot at the game that didn’t include vehicles. It’s fairly apparent that if Resistance 2 were to include vehicles, they’d be just as great as the rest of the game. Resistance 2 wins based merely on the theoretical possibility of how great the vehicles would have been, if the game had included them. - Paul

Why Killzone 2 will be better: It’s hard to argue that Killzone 2’s more realistic arsenal is somehow better than R2’s ridiculously versatile sci-fi weaponry, but I’m going to anyway. Killzone 2’s guns are about simplicity – the weapons are for killing Helghast as quickly and cleanly as possible, rather than gawking at in wonder and amazement. They’re not toys, and they don’t feel like toys; every last one has a kick to it, and there’s a brutal satisfaction in zooming in on an unsuspecting trooper and drilling him full of assault-rifle rounds that isn’t really present in R2. And while we’re on the topic of satisfaction, the lightning cannon that shows up in exactly one level of KZ2 is powerful enough to briefly inspire a god complex, something I haven’t felt with any of R2’s guns. - Mikel

Why Resistance 2 is better: Killzone 2’s lightning cannon is a nice idea, but it ends up handling like an overpowered rifle – one that just happens to shoot electricity instead of bullets. R2, on the other hand, takes creative, multi-purpose weaponry much, much further. Want a magnum that shoots explosive round? No problem. How about being able to shoot around corners? Or through walls? R2 has guns that can handle that for you. And, of course, there’s the lightning issue. Killzone 2’s lightning gun is nice, but R2 has a sniper rifle that can deploy a beacon to shoot lightning at aliens for you – you only need to hit the trigger once. - Paul

Why Killzone 2 will be better: Again, Killzone 2 doesn’t (yet) have co-op, although that isn’t necessarily a disadvantage considering that R2’s co-op mode takes players through a “parallel campaign,” instead of the game’s actual story. Also, R2 might support up to 60 players, but Killzone 2’s play modes – which seamlessly cycle from one to the next in the middle of matches – are a little more versatile, and the fact that you can customize them keeps things just a little more interesting than R2’s more straightforward setup. - Mikel

Why Resistance 2 is better: If you think of the “parallel campaign” as an entirely new story, new characters and fresh strategy (which it is), it’s pretty obvious that you’re getting a better deal with R2.

And as far as trading 60 player battles for the ability to cycle through gametypes without changing the map… I laugh in the general direction of all Killzone 2 players and their tiny multiplayer matches. - Paul